Offworld Trading Company

[Sareln]

New expansion out today for the campaign mode.

If you tried the campaign and enjoyed it, this should interest you. If you thought the game could use more depth and replayability, this may interest you.

Full Details Here

Store Page Here  with a shorter description.


Full disclosure: I designed this. Soren turned me loose, and I got to do everything that I thought would improve the campaign. I'm curious to find out how well I did with it.


- Sirian

That's awesome.  I'll let you know when I find the time for it.  I really enjoyed the base-game but don't have the nerves for MP

[rho21]

Bought the game a few weekends back when it was on sale and having lots of fun with it so far. I'll put the expansion on my wishlist and pick it up when I'm done with the base game. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you've done with it.

Mentioning which, I'm in the middle of a campaign at the moment, and the patch they rolled out at the same time as the expansion has broken things a bit in a non-destructive way. All the player colours in the screen between matches are now light blue, for instance.  Oh well, only one match to go before that campaign is won (hopefully).

[Sareln]

It's OTC rho, beyond the expansion phases isn't it win or go home? :P

[Sareln]

I had forgotten that I did the founder thing for this game, Thanks for the early Christmas present!

[Sirian]

It's OTC rho, beyond the expansion phases isn't it win or go home? :P

The tournament isn't a straight playoff. More like "Survivor", where only one is voted off the show each week. When only four are left, there's a "regular" game to end it all, with stock buyout of rivals as the goal.

That's still true with the DLC, but the progression aspect from game to game is enhanced, while the strategy needed to prevail each week has been deepened.


I complimented Soren on the base game's campaign when the game came out, but observed that I was running in to the same strategic and tactical situations over and over. After two full campaigns (the second one on a higher difficulty level), I noted that this aspect had room for improvement. He was like, "Oh yeah? Where?" So I got the chance to show him.

Should be good for a lot more replays now.


- Sirian

[Sirian]

PS. The Russian dude is absurdly strong on Mars.

Maybe he plays to your strengths.

There's some pretty unfair difficulty levels in there, though. Maybe you can handle another notch or two? (If you're cruisin on the top level, I want to see THAT in a Let's Play!)


I have been able to handle Manager (break even level vs the AIs, no handicaps) reliably, so I might bump it up a notch on my next run.


- Sirian

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Terror got me to buy this game and it's excellent. I haven't tried the campaign or any MP yet, but I've probably played around 100 Skirmish 4P FFAs against Manager AIs though. I've gotten to where I can win about 70% of the time with no pauses. I'll probably take the MP leap soon. Not sure I'll get this DLC since it seems campaign based. But maybe I'll get there.

[Lewwyn]

If you tried the campaign and enjoyed it, this should interest you. If you thought the game could use more depth and replayability, this may interest you.

Consider me interested. Gotta find the time though.

[Mardoc]

This thread got me to buy the game at the last sale, and I'm definitely enjoying it. It's a good size for me now that I'm a little too busy for civ: can run a game in a half hour, and it's interesting enough that I will just do another and another if I've got a longer stretch open.

Sirian, that's pretty much the hole in the game that was going to make me bored soonest, so thanks!

[v8mark]

So my short review after quite a few more hours now is that this DLC is absolutely fantastic. Great work, Sirian! The flavour, the writing and the mechanics are all top notch (with one or two very minor, nitpicky exceptions). I love that the original campaign has different lengths, and that it now incorporates Ceres. It's such good work, and such good value for money. Bravo.

The first of the very minor gripes is the resource shipment, and specifically the mechanic that replaces one type of shipment with another when the first request is fulfilled. Several times now this has created click-races with the AI, which is a very unsatisfying way to lose a bunch of money that you weren't expecting to lose. Even though you know what's coming next, and can buy the second one immediately if you want to, the AI often jumps in between your clicks to steal the cheap shipment, leaving your second click to send a load of $450 electronics instead of the $30 water you were expecting. (Click races against human players are extremely unfun; click races against AI opponents, who have rather an unfair advantage, are even less fun.)

The second is Nekrasov, although I perhaps was a little hasty in calling him OP; I hit some pretty good situations in my first run out with him (plentiful aluminum, mainly!) and was able to plug the holes in his kit very quickly as a consequence. I still think he's one of the strongest campaign leaders, but he's not as far away from the standard as I'd originally feared. The only thing I would really question in his kit is the ability to found any HQ right off the bat (Indie Developer). This trait was used for Anastasia Xu's special ability in the original campaign to excellent effect, as it makes up in flexibility for what are very real shortcomings: her lack of engineers overall, and her inability to make power with any efficiency.

With Nekrasov it's a little different, as his overall number of engineers is fairly high, and his traits generally lead him down the Expansive route more often than not:

• 3x Geothermal engineers (!!) - Expansive gets cheap geotherms. (I have a little bit of a problem with this conceptually as well; geotherms are feast or famine, in that there are sometimes no geotherms on the map at all, and putting such a large amount of his power into them leads to a lot of dependence on the map. The presence or absence of geotherms is also not something you can plan around in the campaign screen.)
  
• 1x Quarry engineer, and 3x steel mill engineers - so no Scavenger.
  
• 1x for a bunch of secondary production buildings - so no Scientific.
  
• Can use aluminum as glass, but no equivalent bonus for electronics - so no Robotic.
  

Only Robotic is even remotely viable in the early game, and even then it's at a large disadvantage to Expansive. So I'm not sure it affects the gameplay that much - it just feels like a needless bonus on top of what is already a very strong leader. I think he should be Expansive only.

Again, as far as gripes go these are extremely minor. I love the campaign and will be playing it for a while. I'm playing on Executive, by the way, which is probably a couple of notches below where I should be playing (I'm near the top of the MP ladder as well).